Death too becoming

There is something profoundly disturbing about a man who exults at the news that he is to die by firing squad. Eyes flashing, teeth bared, the assassin Amrozi hit the air in that Bali courtroom as if he had kicked the winning goal in the World Cup.

The argument against a state execution is well put by the Adelaide magistrate Brian Deegan, whose son Josh died in the bombing. "I don't believe in the death penalty and I would hate to think that somebody's life was going to be taken in my son's name," he said when he learnt of the sentence.

There is another, more practical consideration. In their obscene perversion of Islam (Jemaah Islamiah is no more Muslim than the Nazis were Christian), Amrozi and his murderous ilk believe that terrorism achieves martyrdom. It would be good to deny them that.

With those fleshy lips, the bony cheeks and that cold, pop-eyed glare, the Communications Minister, Senator Richard Alston, has a fierce, choleric air. He looks like some mad Prussian junker.

When he appears on television I imagine him topped off by a pickelhaube, one of those spiked helmets of the Kaiser's army, handlebar moustache bristling as he goosesteps about a parade ground to the blare of trumpets.

Not counting Lord Downer, is there a minister of more bluster and less achievement in the Howard Government? The last chunk of Telstra remains unsaleable. Alston's introduction of digital television is a shambles. His grand scheme to "reform" cross-media ownership by delivering the lot to Packer and Murdoch fell over in the Senate.

All that is left now is to punish the ABC for refusing to cheer for the second Gulf War, a mission he has undertaken with bully-boy vengeance. His strategy is to starve the corporation of funds and now, it appears, to offer his unique programming expertise.

"I don't know about comedy generally," Alston said on Tuesday, with masterly understatement. "They have things like The Fat and The Glass House, which are popular, but I have always thought the ABC should be providing quality alternatives to the commercials."

In fact what the Government really thinks is that the ABC should be sold off for scrap. It is an ideological obsession, although ministers do not admit it because there would be public outrage.

But their media toadies have no such inhibition, as we can judge from the predictably unanimous cries in the Murdoch press: the ABC must no longer burden the ordinary taxpayer; the chardonnay lefties can pay for it themselves.

That might just work if the ratbags of the right would in turn fund their much admired Philip Ruddock gulag archipelago, thus relieving decent people of the odium. But in the meantime, as Alston reminds us, money is tight.

"We make a judgement out of what we can afford for the budget," he huffed. "It's always going to be tough. We had the drought, we had Iraq, and we just can't accommodate people's wish lists."

Not all of them, anyway. But if you are a golfing mate of the Prime Minister and a lavish political donor, and you want a fat taxpayer subsidy to manufacture the inefficient ethanol fuel additive that nobody wants, please step this way. Would $20 million be enough for starters?

The anniversary passed unnoticed, but it was 40 years ago, on August 5, 1963, that the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union agreed to the first nuclear test ban treaty of the Cold War.

John F. Kennedy's secretary of state, Dean Rusk, signed for the US,Sir Alec Douglas-Home for Britain, and the dour Andrei Gromyko for the Soviet Union. In 1500 words they banned nuclear tests in the atmosphere, in space, or under water.

Then, as The New York Times reported, "led by Premier Khrushchev, they strode into one of the Kremlin's most glittering ballrooms for a reception as a Soviet band played Gershwin's Love Walked In.

"The song summed up the mood of the day. From the start of courtesy calls by the ministers at 9am to the end of the gala reception just before nightfall, it was filled with firm East-West handshakes, warm smiles, friendly jokes and toasts to 'peace and friendship' drunk in Soviet champagne."

Things have moved on in the four decades since, you might say, although not necessarily for the better. We now have a globally dominant America which makes its own rules, "a hyper-power ... this giant, a kind of Uber-Gulliver", as it was accurately portrayed by the distinguished German writer Dr Josef Joffe in a lecture in Sydney this week.

For the George Bush neo-cons, treaty signing went out with tail fins on Cadillacs.

No to the Kyoto greenhouse gas agreement, no to the International Criminal Court, no to the 1995 Biological Weapons Convention, no to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, no to whatever. American diplomacy is now conducted not by the State Department but the Pentagon.

And the latest Washington rumours have it that the relatively moderate Colin Powell will pull the pin if Bush is re-elected next year, to be replaced by Donald Rumsfeld's sinister neo-con deputy, Paul Wolfowitz.

But why not go the whole hog?

If Arnie "The Terminator" Schwarzenegger doesn't make it as governor of California, he would be an ideal secretary of state in this Administration.